1. NATHealth is three years old. How do you evaluate your achievements so far?

We all dreamt of building one collaborative institution which is a common platform for all stake holders. I am happy to say that in the last three years, everybody has worked together and we have got something solid in terms of a collaborative institution. It is a unified and credible platform which is trying to work for improving access and quality in healthcare which is NATHealth’s vision too.

Encouraging innovation is one of our top six mission pillars. In a nutshell, we dreamt to build a Nasscom like institution in healthcare and three years down the line I can say that thanks to everybody’s collaborative effort and we got something going. It is our duty to ensure that we build on what we have done. The missions that NATHealth focuses on are infrastructure, skill, policy advocacy, encouraging innovation, best practise sharing and enabling the ecosystem to bring in more funding because funding is still a top issue. So these are the top six mission pillars that NATHealth is focussing on.

We have just launched a make in India report in collaboration with Deloitte. The most important thing is that Nathealth took the decision to focus on ethics. We have been able to complete what is perhaps healthcare sector’s first comprehensive code of ethics that has been launched. In short, it is a good start of a collaborative institution but a long way to go still.

2. How will the collaboration of NATHealth and IMA help in bettering the healthcare sector.

Everyone knows what is right and what is wrong and in every sector there is a set of values which states the rights and wrong things. In healthcare you have a human body in agony and pain which is surrounded by distressful friends and family. So healthcare is unique and we cannot treat healthcare like any other industry. Even in other sectors there is question of ethics but in healthcare the question is more relevant.

We felt that there was a gap between what should be and where we are. We felt that the only way is to come up with a self regulated document. So we approached IMA as NAThealth comprises of these stake holders and the combination of IMA and NAThealth would be very powerful.

I am very proud and happy to say that NATHealth leaders have worked very hard along with IMA and we have released the code of ethics. So the first battle is won. Now we have to go for implementing it and time will tell in what direction we go.

With immense pride “India Live” celebrated its 10th national conference in Mumbai from 28th February to 3rd March 2019. The conference turned out to be a gold mine of information, with emphasis on academics, education and exchange of knowledge with leaders in interventional cardiology from both India and abroad.